Amherst, MA -- On Thursday, Feb. 28, at 5:00 p.m., the Mead will launch "A Closer Look," a new series of late afternoon gallery talks offering fresh perspectives on art from the museum's collection. Informal and conversational, the gallery talks will be led variously by museum staff, students, visiting scholars, and artists.

On Thursday, Feb. 28, at 5:00 p.m., students will host A Closer Look: The Trinkett Clark Memorial Collection, featuring a notable group of contemporary prints by artists active in this region. Assembled over the past five years by teams of college students as part of an annual project led by the Mead's director, Elizabeth Barker, the collection honors the museum's late curator of American art, Trinkett Clark.

On Thursday, Mar. 14, at 5:00 p.m., Mead curators will host A Closer Look: Curatorial Favorites, featuring works in the Art for All exhibition, including a French Impressionist landscape painting by Alfred Sisley and a series of lithographs by Russian artist Oleg Vassiliev.

On Tuesday, Apr. 2, at 4:30 p.m., Dr. Alan Blum, a professor of Family Medicine at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and director of its Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, will host A Closer Look: Compassion and the Art of Medicine; A Conversation with Dr. Alan Blum, Amherst College Class of 1969 and Honorary Degree Recipient 2006. Dr. Blum will trace a tobacco-linked theme from the Mead's collection of Chinese snuff bottles to his own sketches of patients and the touching stories that accompany them. Dr. Blum's talk at the Mead is co-sponsored by the Croxton Lecture Fund and the Amherst College Department of Biology.

On Thursday, Apr. 18, at 5:00 p.m., photographer Stephen Petegorsky will host A Closer Look: Art and Social Engagement; A Conversation with Photographer Stephen Petegorsky, Amherst College Class of 1975. Petegorsky will discuss his powerful images that address issues of disability resulting from acts of war, accidents, or disease. Taken mainly in developing countries to document the work of the Polus Center for Social and Economic Development, Petegorsky's photographs record distressing circumstances, while celebrating the humanitarian efforts to redress those circumstances as well as the fundamental human dignity of his subjects.

The Mead Art Museum houses the art collection of Amherst College, spanning 5,000 years and encompassing the creative achievements of many world cultures. An accredited member of the American Association of Museums, the Mead participates in Museums10, a regional cultural collaboration. The museum and its gift shop-café are open Tuesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. year-round, and until midnight on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday during the academic term.

For more information, including a complete schedule of all museum events, please visit amherst.edu/mead or call 413/542-2335.